Sunday, May 4, 2008

Tribe Offense Continues to Nosedive

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. The Kansas City Royals shut out the Cleveland Indians, 2-0, to sweep a rain shortened 2 game set at Progressive Field. This after managing only 2 runs last night against the Royals.

Casey Blake threw a somewhat difficult ground into RF to score the Royals first run in the fifth and spoil another brilliant effort by young Tribe LHP Aaron Laffey. Laffey went 7 strong inning only giving up 4 hits, 2 walks and the 1 unearned run, that scored on Blake's throwing error, while whiffing 5 Royals hitters.

In a baffling managerial move in the 9th, Uncle Eric Wedge pulled Raffy Perez for Raffy Betancourt with 2 out and no on in the 9th and Betancourt, now sporting a 6.39 ERA) promptly gave up a solo HR to feared hitter Miguel Olivo to give Kansas City an insurmountable 2-0 lead. Insurmountable for the Indians inept offense anyways. Why was Perez pulled for Betancourt in that situation? It makes no sense. The was no strategical advantage to have Betancourt face Olivo instead of Perez. None.

The Indians offense was shut down by Gil Meche, Leo Nunez and Joakim Soria to the tune of 4 hits and no walks. 4 base runners total. But hey they only struck out 5 time and didn't ground into any double plays. Well, when you only have 4 base runners it's difficult.

The bottom 5 spots of the line-up are officially a wasteland. The batting averages after the game stand as follows: Peralta .216, Hafner .209, Garko .242 (after a 2-3 afternoon), Blake .202 and The As-Man .191. Ugly. Pure ugly. They are now 3-13 when scoring 3 runs or less. They have played 31 games and stand at 14-17. Yes, that fuzzy math means they have scored 3 runs or MORE THAN HALF THEIR GAMES.

They have a day off before heading to New York to face the Yankees for their final 3 game set ever at Yankees Stadium. If they can't score more that 4 runs in each of those games, odds are they are coming back home 0-3. You can't get worse that 0 runs... I hope.